Sub postmistress sentenced after admitting near £25k fraud

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/ ... 000_fraud/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A FORMER Kendal sub postmistress has been given a suspended prison sentence after admitting a near-£25,000 fraud.

Katherine McQue, 47, falsified records at the Rinkfield post office to hide the fact that it had less cash than it should have done.

She was originally charged with stealing the money but that charge was dropped when the prosecution accepted that she had not taken it.

Instead she pleaded guilty to committing fraud by making false entries in the Post Office accounting system to cover up the losses in an attempt, she said, to gain enough time to pay the money back.

McQue, who now lives in Cotebrook, near Tarporley in Cheshire, had previously denied doing anything wrong, saying it was the fault of the official Post Office accounting system – known as Horizon – which, she claimed, was flawed and showed losses when in fact none had occurred.

But when she appeared in court on Monday she admitted such a claim had no foundation.

Prosecuting counsel Andrew Rutter said McQue had run the post office since October 2005, but in August 2008 she realised there was a shortfall in the cash being held there.

From then until June 2009, when a Post Office auditor arrived to examine her accounts, she made “repeated and regular” false entries to disguise the shortfall.

Mr Rutter said it had not been established where the £24,911 had gone, but he stressed: “We do not assert that she has herself benefited.”

In mitigation defence barrister Patrick Cassidy, said that after discovering the shortfall McQue wanted to give herself time to make up the loss.

“But she was fighting a losing battle,” he said.

He said she had now paid back every penny.

McQue, who now works as a sixth form health and social care teacher in Cheshire, was given a nine month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and made to do 150 hours unpaid community work.

She was also ordered to pay £1,000 towards the costs of the prosecution.

Passing sentence, the judge, Recorder Kevin Talbot, said McQue should have reported the shortfall to her bosses as soon as she noticed it.

“By failing to indicate to your superiors that there were these problems, the problems just continued and the losses went on accumulating, accumulating and accumulating.”

He said McQue had broken the trust of her employers and had committed “a serious offence”.

[fishtank]

the prosecution accepted that she had not taken it.

He said she had now paid back every penny

Something definitely isn't right with the Post Office accounting system....

[Wessex]

Is every Post Office on the fiddle? There must be something seriously going wrong for the amount of court cases going on, and they all seem remarkably similar

[billyhayes]

Is every Post Office on the fiddle?

Maybe this is what happens when people are scraping a living on minimum wage?

If they were paid more, the temptation to tickle the till might be less.

Some of the stories told to me by the Audit/IB teams; WHsmith staff went wild when they took over post offices.
Then again, if you have someone of 18 odd years old, working for that shower of shite, suddenly given a till with thousands in it... you fill in the blanks...

I know that this particular article refers to a sub but still...

[subbie]

I like the bit about "you should have reported the deficit to your bosses" ........and they would have done what exactly??

There is more to this than the computer system, its called THE SYSTEM.

Subbie

[fishtank]

I must be thick subbie but where does all of this stolen money go?
I know some of them will be lying but there are too many of these "We don't think you stole it but give us it back anyway" cases for it not to have come to someone's attention.
Is it just a way of securing a successful prosecution if POL agree to drop the theft charge in return for pleading guilty to false accounting?
If it is they need a rethink because it makes it look like they are recovering losses that never existed in the first place....as well as sending out the message that theft isn't really theft if you pay it back...it's false accounting.

[sussub]

I know some of them will be lying but there are too many of these "We don't think you stole it but give us it back anyway" cases for it not to have come to someone's attention.


There is a lovely clause within the subbie's contract that if ANYTHING goes wrong, POL can reclaim the money guilt or not. This way they have no interest in finding these "losses". Makes me wonder if franchises like WH Smiths and the Crowns are investigated and regarded as guilty from the start as a subbie is.
JFSA are fighting to bring this situation to the attention of the public, POL are not willing to have any question made of Horizon. The official line is that it is robust and a secure repository system.

[subbie]

The contract clause actually says, a Postmaster is responsible for all losses caused by his own carelessness, negligence, or error, and for losses of all kinds caused by his assistants.
However this contract was written in the days before Horizon, when all you had was cash stock and a paper based balance sheet which you completed manually.
Now you have a computer whose integrity has at least a question mark hanging over it, and the ability to transmit financial data all over the shop, so finger trouble can cause a shortage that is actually only a figure error, and not a real cash shortage. Trouble is the Computer TELLS YOU,what should be in the safe, if the computer wants more than you have then ta da, you have a shortage.

I believe a lot of people panic, and try to cover up what is a figure mistake, because of the internal system of appealing against paying shortages. The appeal system is akin to talking to a brick wall, ie you are wasting your time.

In Crowns where I believe they have the same kind of shortages, the individual is treated in a completely different way.

If you think about some of the figures involved, how could the branch function if say £25k was missing from the safe?

subbie